I enjoyed the book. As always I wish we had more content and that the plot would be moved along more in the book.

The cliff hanger from the last book was a fizzle. I was expecting a battle, and then a problem with dealing with the community, right off the bat in this book. Didn't happen. The community dealt with a few issues and but not much happened. Not a lot of information on the situation outside of the community. Not a lot of info on Grants future role or training for this role. Not a lot on the formation, structure, and strength of the patriot forces. A little on dealing with resource limitations. I believe that most people would be OK during the growing season. The problem will be food storage and growing shortages. Gas shortages are always downplayed in this type of book as most Americans cannot even imagine getting by without a car.

The time line will be interesting in the next book. The collapse started in early spring. This book ends in late Nov early December. 299 days equals about 10 months. So the war must be won and a government formed in less than 3 months or 2 books. Heavy G has already stated that he will conclude in 9 books with one to tell personal stories about people involved.

Hopefully the next book will have lots of battles and other interesting stuff.

I agree with your Lima comments. The statists almost feel like a caricature of how the extreme left really acts. Now those are Washington (state) liberals, which may be a different brand than the Georgia liberals I'm used to, but they don't feel real.

We all have biases. I imagine HG, living in Olympia, has a unique experience. There's really no other commercial or industrial core there, just the state government.Of course Seattle and the eastside are loaded with huge companies you've heard of: starbucks, amazon.com, microsoft, boeing, expedia, etc.Tons of "progressive" people in Seattle, but at least the majority are earning a living in private commerce.

Additionally 100 miles in any direction, and the population resembles the cast of Duck Dynasty. It's still hard for me to imagine a handful of bureaucrats overpowering a huge population of people.

I enjoyed the book. I agree it wasn't as exciting or informative as some of the past books, but I feel like it's setting the stage for the big events in the next books. In response to the Nancy Ringman chapter, it's nice to think that within the course of a couple month people wouldn't be so quick to 'pull the trigger' so to speak on murdering a bunch of people. However, you have to look at it, we say as preppers, we will do anything to keep our family and ourselves safe. You put people in positions like that and convince them that they have to kill huge numbers of people to 'survive', it suddenly becomes very justifiable. There isn't too much difference except we are doing those things for the right reasons. Look at a large number of the major political upheavals throughout history and the world, mass killings seem to go hand in hand.

I hear what you guys are saying but my impression was that the speed of the chapter was deliberate. It came across to me that the callousness and uncaring nature of the Lima government which are amplified by Nancy's psychopathic tendencies towards dehumanising the "tea baggers" were extremely reminiscent of the concentration camp commandants during world war 2. In fact some of the testimony that I read/saw at the Washington Holocaust museum.

Finished this morning. Can't wait for the next book, can't wait for this thing to get moving and resolved. Can't wait to see Ringman properly tried and hanged. Anybody want to bet that Grant gets to preside over the trial?

Finished the book early this morn. It was a good read. The secondary stories seemed disjointed, they didn't flow. The main story line almost seemed an afterthought. Nothing really happening there. The final chapter leaves me a bit disturbed to be honest. Ringman was previously noted as running out of her Prozac (for anti depression), which reportedly has some of the most mild discontinuation symptoms (dizziness). Her staunch pro government attitude has become zealotry, not unexpected. The transformation to willing mass murdering camp commander seems to be over the top, considering the time line so far. I know folks will reference the Nazi rise and their actions. That took years to unfold with far more drastic circumstances leading up to it. Maybe naive wishful thinking on my part, but I would think such a transformation would take either a far longer time (given the current story), or more drastic and frequent firsthand events.

Finished the book early this morn. It was a good read. The secondary stories seemed disjointed, they didn't flow. The main story line almost seemed an afterthought. Nothing really happening there. The final chapter leaves me a bit disturbed to be honest. Ringman was previously noted as running out of her Prozac (for anti depression), which reportedly has some of the most mild discontinuation symptoms (dizziness). Her staunch pro government attitude has become zealotry, not unexpected. The transformation to willing mass murdering camp commander seems to be over the top, considering the time line so far. I know folks will reference the Nazi rise and their actions. That took years to unfold with far more drastic circumstances leading up to it. Maybe naive wishful thinking on my part, but I would think such a transformation would take either a far longer time (given the current story), or more drastic and frequent firsthand events.

I tend to agree. Nancy Ringman has her own normalcy bias and I don't think she could make the transformation from liberal zealot to mass murderer so easy. She is nuts, abusive and a bully but her mental conception of herself seems to be classic liberal, we will all hold hands and sing kumbaya and win over the masses through our intellect and empathy. Then she gets nasty when things don't go her way. The transition to openly mass murdering people would likely be a mind-f*** even for her psychotic self.

The portrayal of an insurgency seems a little shallow as well. G consulting with personnel who work in Special Forces (the inspiration for SF Ted) I was expecting a better dive into the constituent parts of an insurgency by doctrine (the Underground, Axillary and Guerrilla Force) and their roles.

The Preparation and The Collapse are still my favorite. The journey to the prepared lifestyle always seems the most authentic (maybe because it has already happened for the author whereas the calamity has not).